A Renewed Antiwar Movement?

I have written a couple of columns arguing that we need serious, historically grounded strategic thinking in the U.S. antiwar movement. It’s time to engage in a bit of actual discussion of strategy.

This March may have marked the nadir of the movement. There was no national protest on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The event that essentially took the place of a big march, The Winter Soldier organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War—a gathering of more than 200 veterans giving heart-wrenching testimony on the roots of civilian deaths and detainee abuse in official policy—was nearly ignored by the mass media. It was not even mentioned in the New York Times, whose public editor later explained that the paper was uninterested in reporting “charges ... by organizations with strongly held political viewpoints about the war.”

However, there are signs of a renewal. A number of exciting local actions did take place in March. The shame of an unmarked anniversary, together with an increase in violence in Iraq, has galvanized planning for more. At Columbia, next week will see a series of lectures, film screenings, and creative events, the public reading of the names of Iraqi and American dead for 14 hours each day, and a walkout. Nationally, the 42,000-member International Longshore and Warehouse Union has announced a one-day strike against the war on May 1.

Where will the movement go from here? The reconstruction that will be required to recover from the recent low point provides, as a silver lining, an opportunity to go forward on a new and more effective basis.

Some who place their faith in Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton to end the war may suggest a primarily electoral strategy—if a Democratic victory in November will mean the end of the war, perhaps we should plan any antiwar activism with the exclusive goal of building public support for the Democratic nominee.

But the repeated votes of the Democratic Congress for continued war funding, not to mention the refusal of any major presidential candidate to pledge a full withdrawal by 2013, should make us question this faith. Whether or not one believes, as I do, that the war in Iraq is just as much a Democratic as a Republican war, one ought to recognize that both Clinton and Obama have made no concrete promises without exceptions for “residual forces” and the like. Upon taking office, either would face immense pressure to do the “responsible” thing and keep U.S. troops in Iraq. Any hope of an actual end to the bloody occupation depends on massive counter-pressure from a principled and independent antiwar movement.

On the other hand, many participants in the antiwar movement have noted, and lauded, a turn toward disruptive direct action. In part, this is a welcome recognition of the naivety of the idea that simply demonstrating the breadth of public opposition through marches and letter-writing would cause politicians to abandon the war. The failure of the gigantic Feb. 15, 2003 protests to put a dent in war preparations should have taught us better, as should an occupation continuing years after majority public opinion turned against the war. Clearly, more forceful activism is needed.

However, the turn toward direct action does not always have the best motivations. Sometimes, it is not defended on a strategic basis at all, but on an abstract, purely moral basis—as if actions involving greater personal sacrifice were intrinsically superior. In fact, the ethical imperative to end the war implies an ethical imperative to choose the most effective means available.

Alternatively, direct action is sometimes defended as a media strategy—creative shock tactics, in this view, can get coverage for antiwar views. But the lack of coverage of Winter Soldier ought to cure us of any illusions that there is a shortcut to getting media attention absent a movement shaking up U.S. politics. The mass audience corporate media are owned and managed by people who are just as much part of the ruling class as the politicians.

Yet, despite the press blackout, Winter Soldier was not a failure, and its successes can point the way forward. Widely disseminated through alternative media outlets and the Internet, the testimony educated and strengthened the antiwar movement. Moreover, it brought IVAW into contact with thousands of new veterans, hundreds of whom have already joined the group.

Locally centered, nationally networked political education and base-building is a necessary next step. Disruptive action is often productive but can only pose a real threat to the status quo when it is a part of a mass movement. Rather than taking on the dubious challenge of persuading politicians to operate more ethically, we need to build the kind of force that is one of the factors that even the most cynical calculator must take into account, just as the movement against the Vietnam War was by the early 1970s, both domestically and inside the military.

To get there, we need to organize from the ground up. All kinds of tactics can contribute, and disruption of business as usual through walkouts, civil disobedience, and strikes must be part of the picture. But direct action is not always the answer, and a seemingly modest action like reading the names of the dead, which involves hundreds of people in awareness-raising, can play a crucial role.

David Judd is a senior in the School of Engineering and Applied Science majoring in computer science. The Point, However runs alternate Mondays.